No gold‐diggers here: Women investors in colonial Australian mining

Grant Fleming, Zhangxin (Frank) Liu, David Merrett and Simon Ville

Economic History Review, 2025, vol. 78, issue 3, 907-932

Abstract: We draw upon an extensive database of investors in colonial Australian mining, during the 1850s–80s, to provide the first historical analysis of the nature of women's share investing in Australia. Women were a minority of investors by number and value of holdings and faced a series of obstacles, yet their presence grew throughout the period. Most women invested independently neither drawing on male relatives nor other women. Many opted for only a single investment in this high‐risk industry, but a small minority built significant portfolios. We reveal that women managed these risks differently from men, taking account of their attitudes towards company characteristics, investor location, portfolio diversification, and the cyclical trends in mining.

Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/ehr.13388

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bla:ehsrev:v:78:y:2025:i:3:p:907-932

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.blackwell ... bs.asp?ref=0013-0117

Access Statistics for this article

Economic History Review is currently edited by Stephen Broadberry

More articles in Economic History Review from Economic History Society Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().